VISUAL ARTS

Milan Design Week

Getting lost in labyrinths

On printed paper

A book takes us on a journey of discovery of 50 labyrinths and mazes, ancient and modern. Approaching the subject from an architectural viewpoint, the author highlights structural features, materials, dimensions and construction stages

The labyrinth is a symbolic element that has fascinated man since antiquity from the one in Knossos to the medieval Christian maze with its 11 concentric circles symbolising sin and the need to follow a path of atonement on the way to finding redemption; and on into the Renaissance when mazes took on a more playful dimension, right down to pop revisitations and the analogy with our subconscious selves governed by Jareth, the character played by David Bowie in Labyrinth. With Labyrinths & Mazess. A Journey through Art, Architecture, and Landscape, Francesca Tatarella presents a collection of labyrinths (50 in all), starting with the Chartres Maze, which is set into the floor of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Chartres, France, and continuing to the present day with Penal Colony 1, the ice maze designed by Yoko Ono and Arata Isozaki at Rovanemi in Finland.

Tatarella analyses the various labyrinths with the eye of an architect, seeking to identify their structural features, materials and dimensions. Where possible she reconstructs the various stages in their construction using archive photographs. A fascinating journey among mazes carefully designed with hedges or by carving geometric patterns in the snow, mirror mazes that multiply space and perspectives, and mazes made of wood, iron and even salt.

After the major restoration work on the basilica of Santa Maria Novella...

30 November 2018

Founded in 1961 by Piera Peroni Abitare magazine has crossed the history of costume, architecture and design, international, following in its pages the evolution of our ways of life and how we inhabit places